Mon City aviator lost in Brazil during World War II

This story is part of Mon Valley Sons of World War II, a series about our sons who lost their lives in service to our country during the war.

The name of 2nd Lt. John Paul Brady is listed on the Veterans Honor Roll Memorial on Main Street in Monongahela. His name is also engraved upon the headstone of his parents, Charles and Elizabeth Brady in Monongahela, and on the East Coast Memorial in Manhattan, N.Y.

By JOHN J. TURANIN
For the MVI

In December 1943, Monongahela’s Charles and Elizabeth Brady received a wallet in the mail from the U.S. Army. It belonged to their missing son, 2Lt. John Paul Brady, a bombardier- navigator on a U.S. Army Air Corps bomber. Lt. Brady had been reported missing in South America seven months earlier. The Bradys had received no word of him since April, yet here was his wallet in their mail, without explanation.

Where was his wallet found? By whom? And where is our son, John? Their questions would take another five years to answer.

The Brady family of Mon City

John Paul Brady was born on Nov. 14, 1919, to Charles Marcus and Elizabeth Cecilia (née Meyers) Brady in Monongahela. The couple had married two years earlier. Charles worked in a coal mine while Elizabeth managed the Brady family household.

John’s paternal grandparents, both born in Ireland, had immigrated to the United States from their home in Scotland in the early 1880s. His maternal grandparents were from Germany, also immigrating to the U.S. in the early 1880s. Both families settled in the Monongahela River Valley, where the men went to work in the local coal mines.

Elizabeth gave birth to five Brady children. Firstborn Alexander Regis arrived in 1918. Following John were Ursula Maureen (1922), James Joseph (1924), and Elisabeth Ann “Libby” (1930). In 1920, the family was renting a home at 420 Chess St. in Monongahela. By 1930, Charles was working as a clerk in a funeral home and they were renting a home at 809 Chess St.

In 1940, the family had moved once again into a rented home at 418 Chess St., and Charles was working as a steward at the local lodge of the Loyal Order of Moose, a fraternal and service organization. By 1940, Alexander, John and Ursula had graduated from Monongahela High School and were working to contribute to the family finances. The Bradys were loyal parishioners of the town’s Transfiguration Catholic Church.

In 1935, John and Alex were on the local junior league football team, the Nifty Newsies, winning the local championship. In 1936, John was on the Orchestral and Entertainment Committee for the high school’s senior party. In 1937, he competed in the local pingpong tournament and two years later played tennis in the Mon City league on the team “Outcasts.”

John graduated from Monongahela High in May 1937 and attended Carnegie Institute of Technology and an extension campus of Pennsylvania State University for three years.

The citizens of Mon City monitored the burgeoning wars over- seas. Germany had long been executing the “Third Reich” political- military strategy of Fuhrer Adolph Hitler. They entered alliances with the like-minded leaders of Italy and Japan. By the end of 1940, Germany had invaded Czechoslovakia, Austria, Poland, France, Denmark, Norway, Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands. Pursuing its own empire-building aspirations, Italy had expanded into Ethiopia, Albania and was invading France by 1940. Japan had assumed control over Korea from the Russians in 1905, but by 1940, Japan had invaded China and French Indochina.

Anticipating the potential for the U.S. to be drawn into hostilities, the Selective Service and Training Act was passed by Congress in September 1940, establishing the first peacetime armed forces draft.

John registered on July 1, 1941. He was 5’7” and 155 pounds, with brown hair and brown eyes. At the time, he was working as a store keeper in charge of supplies for the Equitable Gas Company in Large, Pa.

Nine days after registering, John’s name was pulled early in the draft lottery: number 33 out of 215. Being drafted into the U.S. Army, to John’s chagrin, may have seemed inevitable.

The U.S. enters World War II

Japanese forces launched a surprise attack on the U.S. military bases in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on Dec. 7, 1941. The U.S. declared war on Japan, and as an ally of the Japanese Empire, Germany declared war on the U.S.

John was not interested in serving with the U.S. Army infantry, so on Jan. 27, 1942, he enlisted with the U.S. Army Air Corps. He wanted to fly. John was accepted as an aviation cadet and by April was headed to flight training. John, brother Alexander, and two cousins joined the military that year, and their proud grandmother Meyers was featured in the local newspaper as having four grandsons serving in the armed forces.

Aviation Cadet John P. Brady entered pre-flight training at Maxwell Army Air Field at Montgomery, Ala. Instead of becoming a pilot, the U.S. Army Air Corps decided it needed more bombardiers. Thus, John was transferred to bombardier training at Santa Ana Army Air Base in California.

In May 1942, he traveled with 125 bombardier trainees by rail from Alabama to California, where he joined bombardier class “Squadron 35” at Santa Ana to study the craft.

By early September 1942, John completed his preliminary training at Santa Ana and was transferred to the 12-week advanced bombardier training at Roswell Field in New Mexico. Cadet Brady also trained to be an aerial navigator.

On Nov. 21, 1942, John Brady graduated from bombardier school and was commissioned as a second lieutenant. He transferred to Columbia Army Air Base in South Carolina, and joined the 309th Bomb Group (Medium) for combat training. Brady was assigned to the group’s 376th Bomb Squadron and was equipped to perform both bombardier and navigator roles.

The 309th Bomb Group (Medium) was established to train bomb crews on the U.S. Army Air Corps’ North American B-25 Mitchell medium bomber. With a crew of six, the B-25 was a formidable twin-engined bomber capable of carrying up to 3,000 pounds of bombs.

The B-25 Mitchell became famous for the daring Doolittle bombing raid of Tokyo in April 1942, the first U.S. air strike on the Japanese homeland. Nearly 10,000 Mitchells were produced during the war, serving as a reliable workhorse for both the Army Air Corps and Marine Corps.

In February 1943, 2Lt. Brady was visited by his parents at Columbia Air Base. No one knew, but it would be the last time they would see their son alive.

Heading to war

By April 1943, 2nd Lt.. Brady was in the B-25 air crew of 1Lt. Robert W. Boze. They had completed their combat proficiency training and were ready to deploy overseas. It was time to get into the war.

Their first mission was to fly their B-25 #42-32441 to their U.S. jumping- off point, Homestead Army Airfield, Florida, just south of Miami. They were heading overseas via the southern route by hopping across islands in the Caribbean Sea, Suriname, Brazil and then over the Atlantic Ocean to Africa, possibly via Ascension Island. Their destination in Africa was likely Freetown Air Field in Sierra Leone.

From Africa, they might be directed northward to the Mediterranean or European Theaters, eastward to China-Burma-India Theater or onward to bases in the Southwestern Pacific Ocean such as New Guinea or Australia. Their final destination is not recorded in public documents.

First Lt. Boze was flying in a three-aircraft formation of B-25s. The other two aircraft were B-25 #41-30282 piloted by the flights’ leader, 1Lt. George Lyle, and B-25 #42-32496, flown by 2Lt. H.L. Barnes.

Their first stop in South America was Zandery Air Field at Paramaribo, Suriname. After laying over for rest and aircraft maintenance, the flight departed Zandery at 0752 hrs (local time) on April 27, 1943, due to arrive around noon at Valdecaos Air Field in Belem, Brazil, a coastal town at the mouth of the Amazon River. The day’s journey would be nearly 700 miles. After rest and maintenance in Belem, the B-25s would fly southeast to Natal, Brazil, before heading across the Atlantic to Africa.

As the formation flew toward Belem, they encountered the tropical rainy weather and cloud cover forecast in the preflight weather report. The rain was now continuous with intermittent, one- to two-minute bouts of moderate turbulence. The reduction in visibility required flying by instruments during the final two hours as they approached Belem. The pilots were instrument-rated, so no problems were expected. But visual contact between the three aircraft was lost among the clouds.

At about 80 miles from their destination at 1130 hrs, Lt. Boze was heard over the radio attempting to contact the airfield tower. Flight leader Lt. Lyle attempted to radio Lt. Boze to no avail. No further radio transmissions from Lt. Boze were ever received.

Lt. Boze, B-25 #42-32441, and the crew were never seen again. All except for Lt. John P. Brady.

The search begins; a wallet appears

Sweeping searches of the area and the Amazon River basin began in earnest. The Brazilian Air Corps and civil aircraft joined the search, which continued until being called off June 8. Unfortunately, this was not a rare occurrence as six other aircraft had recently vanished in the vicinity.

On May 11, 1943, the Brady family received a telegram from the War Department: Lt Brady has been missing in the “Latin American Area” since April 27. No further details were provided.

Seven months passed before the family received any more news. Then, on Dec. 14, 1943, they received a letter from the Army Effects Bureau. The bureau was in possession of the wallet of Lt. John P. Brady … would they like it returned to them?

The family soon received the wallet in the mail. To their surprise, it was labeled to have been delivered to the Army Effects Bureau three months earlier, on Sept. 7, 1943. They were anxious and puzzled. Why did it take so long to be notified? Where did John’s wallet come from? Who found it? But more importantly: Has John been found?

Found, buried, then lost forever

The wallet, along with the first information about Lt. John Brady since the accident, had been received by the American Consul on June 8, 1943. Brazilian villagers found a body off the coast of the isolated island of Isla Bailique at the northern mouth of the Amazon River on May 4, 1943. Before burying him near the island lighthouse, they found his wallet on him. They saw fit to send it to the American Consul in Belem.

On Feb. 8, 1944, the Army’s adjutant general sent a letter to the Bradys informing them that their son had, in fact, been killed in an aircraft accident. Ten days later, they received another letter that Lt. Brady had been buried on Isla Bailique, Brazil. When security permitted they would be informed of his burial location. Future efforts could return him to U.S. soil.

Nothing further was communicated to the family for the remainder of the war. After Germany surrendered in May 1945, Japan gave up three months later. The war was over in August 1945.

However, nearly 300,000 U.S. service members remained lost or interred in graves overseas. In response to public outcry, Congress unanimously passed the Return of the Dead Program in May 1946 to repatriate U.S. service members who had been interred overseas during the war. Eventually 171,000 would be returned to the U.S. But despite reaching out to the U.S. Army, the Bradys received no word about the possibility of bringing their son home. Months turned into years.

Unbeknownst to the Bradys, the U.S. Army had traveled to the Amazon Basin and Isla Bailique in February 1948 to search for Lt. John Brady’s grave. A search team located and met with two villagers on Bailique who had buried him near the island lighthouse.

The villagers escorted the team to the gravesite, which had originally been 40 feet from the edge of the Amazon River in 1943. Now, five years later, the ever-changing flow and depth of the Amazon River had covered the gravesite with 10 feet of water and was now 200 feet from shore. His remains, if still present, were at an unknown depth below the river bottom. With the strong river currents, constant soil erosion and silt deposits, the remains of Lt. John Brady were deemed unrecoverable by the searchers. The whereabouts of his crew mates and aircraft were never determined.

In October 1948, the U.S. Army officially declared that Lt. Brady, Lt. Boze and the entire crew of their B-25 were nonrecoverable. In March 1949, Charles and Elizabeth Brady were formally visited by Lt. Colonel E.M. Brown at their home in Monongahela. He shared the results of the investigation and its conclusion. The family gratefully accepted the information as gracefully as they could.

John Paul Brady, remembered

The name of 2Lt. John Paul Brady is listed on the Veterans Honor Roll Memorial on Main Street in Monongahela. His name is also engraved upon the headstone of his parents, Charles and Elizabeth Brady in Monongahela, and on the East Coast Memorial in Manhattan, N.Y.

The crew of the lost bomber B-25 #42-32441 were Pilot 1Lt. Robert W. Boze, Co-Pilot 2Lt. Charles F. Arrott, Jr., Bombardier/Navigator 2Lt. John P. Brady, Flight Engineer SGT Benjamin A. Abrams, Jr., Radio Operator SSGT William T. McKenzie and Gunner SGT Charles N. Delisle.

John J. Turanin is a retired Western Pennsylvanian and grandson of the Mon Valley. His new book is “Tin Men Steel Soldiers: The price paid in WWII by a Pennsylvania mill town: True stories of the lives and losses of 81 men is about Monessen, PA.” John is one of hundreds of volunteers with the nonprofit organization Stories Behind The Stars who are writing memorial stories for every one of the 421,000 U.S. service members and 31,000 Pennsylvanians who lost their lives during WWII. Those interested in joining the effort are encouraged to visit www.StoriesBehindTheStars. org.